Shiros said:

It's like that with all the miniblock games I've played. There are no broken cards in this format to my knowledge. The games are usually quick (3-5 turns on average) and are a blast to play because of the lack of degenerate combos. Instead of people spamming all the annoying stuff (program malfunction, battle prowess, BRT, spinta, feline spike, and so forth) you get decks that require a large amount of luck as there's no one kill card in them. Most of the time you're hanging on the defense by the skin of your teeth because you actually have to think about it rather than "BRT the first attack, BRT the second, commit you out on the third, my turn." Likewise on the attack side you have to plan your attacks really well because they are also a vital part of defense (most blocks are on attacks in mini format).

On top of that there aren't any 'brainless' win cards that require no strategy (feline spike). Most of the 'power' cards require either a combo or some other cost to work. Menuette requires a ton of momentum (not an easy thing to get in mini), Shredding is tough to pull off in this format, Knight breaker, Siegfried's Earth Divide, Dragon's Flame, and all of the other 'kill' cards require two or so attacks to pull off before they can do their big damage. With not a lot of recursion (most of it being from momentum) you have to plan for those. And with no easy life gain you have to watch any hits that come through.

What this block feels like is a more balanced and refined Set 1. The bulk of the cards are perfectly balanced and the good cards are not overpowered. There are a few cards that are worthless in the format but they'll get better once more sets come out.

I'd like to see more blocks on foundations, but that's a minor gripe. We dealt with worse in the dawn of UFS.

Like I said, I agree with Shiros. This really does remind me of what UFS was like back in the early days. And for those of you who are complaining about not being able to abuse your overpowered block 3 cards, go play them in legacy. I've already started the conversion process for most of my decks. Three of them are going to miniblock since they were 75% there anyways. The rest are going to legacy where I can have fun playing with all my old favorites (oh to play cards like Hop and Rolling Storm with the old ***Talim again...)

This has been the best bit of news I've heard since Bitter Rivals got axed.

Eithinis said:

I respectfully disagree. I happened to find the current environment quite fun, and removing most of the available cards will negatively impact my enjoyment of the game a great deal.

This is something that I'm surprised noone has brought up. You mention one of the current problems being a lack of variety in the current decks. What do you think will happen when there are a total of 400 legal cards in the environment? There is no way that is going to lead to greater variety. The decks will just be different from the current ones, and there will be a sharply reduced number of viable decks.

And as for this making it easier for new players to get into the game...I don't see that happening either. As other people have pointed out, this was a real kick in the fork to people who just got into the game, and are now being told that sets which just came out are being dropped from legality.

This is also going to make getting cards harder, not easier. Once the number of legal cards drops this significantly, new 'best' cards will emerge, and their prices will be even higher than the current ones, since more people will want them, as there will be fewer alternatives to them. I would not be surprised if this made even commons and uncommons harder to get and more expensive, as the player base that was using cards from so many sets now all has to use a smaller pool.

In addition, even if we do assume this is good for new players, I can't see how this will benefit existing ones. I currently have 6 legal decks, and 2 more I have been working on. Post rotation, _none_ of them will be legal. The total number of legal cards I own will drop from over 2000 to less than 100. And I should be thankful for this, and think this was something that needed to happen?

DrUnK3n_PaNdA said:

If it wasn't broken, why didn't some counter-meta deck mop the floor at Worlds with all the meta decks that were doing just that?

"I respectfully disagree. I happened to find the current environment quite fun, and removing most of the available cards will negatively impact my enjoyment of the game a great deal."

You are an extreme minority.

"This is something that I'm surprised noone has brought up. You mention one of the current problems being a lack of variety in the current decks. What do you think will happen when there are a total of 400 legal cards in the environment? There is no way that is going to lead to greater variety. The decks will just be different from the current ones, and there will be a sharply reduced number of viable decks."

With 5 legal sets (totaling about 1200 legal cards, give or take), we had about two viable archetypes, maybe 3, which were basically the same build with a small amount of cards switched around a bit.

With 1 legal set (totaling about 300 legal cards, give or take), we have about 10 viable archetypes. Seriously, just about every character in Block 4 is currently viable. The worst characters in Block 4 are probably Hilde (not enough reduction to get a big "punch" out of anything) and Yi Shan (difficult gimmick to get working properly) - and even then, both are still wholly playable (Hilde has a 7 hand size, an Absurd-esque beater action, and card draw, and Yi Shan's attacks have exceptional stats to make up for the mediocrity of the gimmick).

Sounds like a more diverse format to me! In fact, at our store nobody's built a repeat of someone else's deck yet.

"And as for this making it easier for new players to get into the game...I don't see that happening either. As other people have pointed out, this was a real kick in the fork to people who just got into the game, and are now being told that sets which just came out are being dropped from legality."

Actually, now you can use the easy line: "Spend $20 on any pair of set 12 starter decks and you're good to go". That's not good for new players?

"In addition, even if we do assume this is good for new players, I can't see how this will benefit existing ones. I currently have 6 legal decks, and 2 more I have been working on. Post rotation, _none_ of them will be legal. The total number of legal cards I own will drop from over 2000 to less than 100. And I should be thankful for this, and think this was something that needed to happen?"

I hear a game staying alive and gathering new players is good for old players.

Hilde's 8 damage attack + Dual Wielding. -8! Shadowar, Standoff, Her asset, and Hilde E. And let's not forget about using pumps after the Hilde E commit.

Path of the Master as well, with the attack and DW alone is +6. There's some more action cards too. (+2/+4 if lower, Berserker Rage, etc.)

That's still a much more difficult setup than most other characters need.

Perhaps true, but Siren's+DW+Hilde alone is 17 damage at stupid speeds. Not bad....

kraazivaan said:

Nothing is stopping your group from running "4 point shuriken" tournaments. If your playgroup was healthy with this, then all the more for you. Almost every playgroup i know of has dwindled because of standard, and talking to a few people who i knew who quit and told them about it, the reactions were crazy, and I know at least 6 people *personally* who are going to play again because of this.

Tag summed up my thoughts on this a lot more really. And the reason why this is cheaper for new players? they have to afford two sets now. NOT the same two sets + 4 point shuriken sets. and GOOD LUCK getting darkness blades, or mysterious stances, or assassination arts, etc. The secondary singles market isn't what should be a focus for a player anyway, and i doubt prices will even go up that much.

kraazivaan said:

I'll contest this point. True there are fewer 'best' cards, but do you honestly need them? How many mini decks 'need' 4 copies of Knight breaker? Astrid and Ragnar can do the same kind of damage off of any attack. That's more of a choice on the player making the deck than a necessity in this environment. Plus, with many of the 'best' cards being tailor made to certain characters (unlike many other best cards like BRT) many people are more inclined to trade off the ones they're not using. I've pulled two twilight's embraces that I want to get rid of. It's a 'best' card, but I have no desire to play Zhao. Same with my three copies of Wrath of Heaven. I'll probably chuck them to someone playing Lu Chen for more of Astrid's support.

Plus I've been averaging 8 URs a box instead of the 6 or so in previous sets and, honestly I look for more of the rares now. I'm still looking for 2 more howling spirits and I actively traded for Curse of the Ancient Mariner, Memories that Stain its Armor, and more Bloody but Unboweds. Hell, I'd argue that Midnight Launcher is better than many UR attacks because it's easy to pull off and hurts like hell.

It's actually a very healthy trade environment because the new players can still pull usable cards. How many of them could honestly trade for Feline Spikes, BRTs, Darkness Blades, and more? People hold onto those cards more vigorously than a Catholic does her virginity. You'd have to offer your whole collection and the blood of your first born to get a BRT off of someone. However now you can pretty much pull the power stuff easily and, since there's no one 'game-ender' card, people aren't going to hoard as badly right now.

On top of that, while the number of cards has dropped, the number of bad cards has dropped. Honestly, how many of the attacks in these sets are god awful? I can't name any off the top of my head. Stuff like Cleave, Leg Breaker, Crushing Embrace of the Jotun, Oratorio Halcyon, Zi Mei's Wheel Kick, Pommel Smash, Execution Technique First Right, and Flooded Nile Throw (and even mark of the beast now that it's legal again) are so good I was pulling out most of the attacks in my old decks in favor of these. Like Tag was saying, dropping $20 for two starters is really all you need for a good, solid deck.

Lastly, who here thinks is a worse deterrent for new players: Getting killed in a fair fight or getting owned by BRTs, Feline Spikes, and all of the other cards he'll never get to own? I'd go fair fight, which is what the new Standard offers.

Tagrineth said:

I agree on the Hilde * bit, but I expect Good to conjure up more redux to compensate (if not, run her off Fire with ShadoWar and Stand Off ; that should be enough redux to tide you over for now). However, I couldn't disagree more on Yi Shan** ; run him off Life and you'll see. He only needs 2-3 face-up momentum before he's throwing out 15-damage bombs and taking the sting off attacks, and Life 's ability to push attacks through defenses ( Eiserne Drossel , Robes of the Grandmaster , Purified Body , you get the idea) suits him better than anyone (except maybe Ivy* and her pokefest). Take advantage of his above-average damage values to pound on your opponents, make sure your attacks get through, and Yi Shan** . To be honest, my Yi Shan** is pretty much the strongest deck in our Block 4 playgroup right now, and it's because Life makes his gimmick a whole lot easier to do, and he is nasty once it does get up off the ground

I have to agree with lordaggro on this. Look at Yi Shan and he will rock your world. Striving for protection and any attack makes him a win situation for you. Yi Shan off of life gives you the speed and control check bumps you need to get multiple high damage attacks off. While playing him off of earth makes him a freaking throwing machine.

Eithinis said:

I cba to read the entire thread, so I'll just comment on this.

It WAS fun...or, at least, it was for me. I like playing against the most jank, overpowered, soul-crushing decks I can find, because I enjoy the thoroughly difficult challenge of it all. And that I like to run ELEVEN to FOURTEEN attacks in a deck, tyvm xD

Honestly, the rotation thing annoys me. Wtf was the point in even printing set 11? We're now in a block consisting of sixteen character's worth of support (twenty one with Tekken's addition of five), and that's too limited to my eyes. How is this any different than what people did after worlds last year, where they were playing Block 3 tournaments with only a cople of the sets available, and then bitching and complaining that there were so many broken cards and that there were no answers (and then began the "chill out, next set fixes it k" thing that people got so pissed about)?

It's not.

I dunno...just don't like it. Even if it probably was in the game's best interests...just sucks a lot of the fun out of it for me. I'm already starting to slip as far as playing goes. I honestly hope I don't lose any more will to play, because I love the game and the people.

...they finally print a good **** Balrog and he gets rotated six months later =/

MegaGeese said:

The thing is, set 12 was designed in and of itself to be a superb starting point and standalone set so new players could use it to springboard into the game without any real hassles. James has designed the cards so far to work together properly, not like the early-block-3 switch where several new cards were blatantly still checked by older cards (e.g. ways of punishment - the early block 3'ers were up in arms about how broken it was but it wound up being just good, not broken at all, in a format that HAD anti-discard).

Edit: Also, set 12 has been out for six months. That Balrog has been out for some 10 months.

Thing is this game is ruined by the secondary market more so then other games because of the fast amount of sets that make up a rotation. Most card games have4-6 sets that might make up a rotation max. UFS is looking at dropping 5+ sets in a rotation due to dual liscencing. So if you got hunt cards from all those sets you need to make up cards then you are royally screwed as a player in general. The secondary market charges insane for power common and uncommons. That is to much for the average gammer to get into. I dropped 100 dollars to get some basic singles to help me compete and I couldn't get even close to 2 percent of the decent cards mentioned frequently on the boards from b3. That is a 100 dollars on top of 5 domination starters, 4 cutting edge starters and about a box worth of packs of both sets bought from my local retailer. That is a good chunk of change. The game was insane to get into and stand a chance.

There were and still are so many things in the game that are not in fighting games. There are no moves that stop people from doing supers. There are no moves drain your opponents special meter. There are no moves that do massive heals, minor heals yes, but not massive heals. The whole idea of control in how UFS displays it is not present in fighting games. Control only comes up when a game developer says "Man that card is really powerful. I want to print it but man I need a way for players to stop that card from going off."

MegaGeese said:

There are actually more since there's both Padma and Cassandra promos on the Starter Boxes, Daryia in the Fight Night Kit, an Astrid Promo that was floating around in Worlds, and a Jin Kazama (or however you spell the name as I've never played Tekken) Promo from Tekken. So we've already got that number up to 27 with many, if not all, of them playable (granted, without support).

You also have to consider that FFG will be making new promos for the new blocks. Jin and one other Tekken Character resembled Cody in the fact that they had lower difficulty and multi-character playstyles meaning that alternate versions of them may be in the works. Plus Ragnar still needs a Promo as do the Soul Calibur 4 people, all of which I expect to see new takes on the existing support.

Lastly, what was the point of having 50+ characters if the bulk of them sucked? Most tournaments of late that I've seen have needed diversity because nobody plays outside a group of 10-15 characters in competative play. As it's been said in the past, most decks were clones of each other with slight changes based on the playstyle of individual people. That's because so many characters were god awful. Who ran anyone outside Felicia in Realm of Midnight in a tournament? What about anyone from Cutting edge? Flash of the Blades (I ran Talim in the SoCal regionals but I was the only one)? Deadly Ground? We've had whole sets of characters that never got used because they had to fill up a 10 character roster for each one. At that point I'm sure they were so out of ideas they were tossing out crap just to get it printed. How many of the old characters were really unique like the new ones? There were a few, I'll grant you that, but not 16 in the first two sets.

All the characters in the new Standard are balanced, unique, and fun. I honestly have trouble finding guys to build decks on because they're all really good and interesting. I'd rather have 21 GOOD characters than 80 bad ones where you see 10 get played.

griffin: he said 21 character's worth of support , not 21 characters. He's talking about the (un)common/(ultra) rare foundations/attacks/assets/actions that make up the bulk of a deck, not the single character card that goes in front.

griffinman01 said:

Presumably, that's why he said this.

And 21 characters-worth of support is actually 43 characters-worth of support in old money, now that each character gets 18 cards instead of 9 and assuming that the final 9 cards in Tekken are support cards.

i think warriors dream mand flames of fame should be still legal, nothin is broken in either set and plus we have more product to work around,

Goo said:

I thought about this and I came up with one flaw with set 11: too much card draw.

"There were and still are so many things in the game that are not in fighting games. There are no moves that stop people from doing supers. There are no moves drain your opponents special meter. There are no moves that do massive heals, minor heals yes, but not massive heals. The whole idea of control in how UFS displays it is not present in fighting games. Control only comes up when a game developer says "Man that card is really powerful. I want to print it but man I need a way for players to stop that card from going off.""

CCGs cannot function very well without some form of control. If there's no way to disrupt your opponent, the game becomes "which aggro deck is the most consistent turn 2 killer?"

Also, "control" in a sense very much exists in some fighters, notably in 3D fighters. Ever watch a good Cassie player in SC3?

WIll FFG print more SCIV booster boxes? My LGS likes to keep up with the current format but we cant seem to get SCIV packs for some reason we can get decks but not boosters.

Tagrineth said:

No, and I watched the evo2k9 finals (that Ivy made Cassie look like a scrub), but I have seen the top characters in Guilty Gear and BlazBlue and if that's not control then I don't know what is.

You do have a point though, aquakinesis alone gives massive draw. Though, one could make an arguement that the card draw in set 11 goes to the lesser symbols in B4 right now. Namely water, void, and order (though I hear Paul will change that for order). On the other hand, hugo gives death, earth, and all draw. While all needs it, death and earth don't so...yeah. I could go either way. I really liked set 11, and I'll miss it, but I can go on without.

Edit: Oh, missed the 3 and my brain went straight to 4.

Tagrineth said:

I agree. Right now I think the best thing to do is exactly what they're doing and starting fresh. I'm sure Tekken will address some issues like card draw and life gain. If it doesn't (which it may not since they may have not thought about the rotation idea during the set design) then I'm sure the next set will.

Maybe not the next one either, since Steve said that SVIV02 is already printed and in the warehouse. But yeah, probably the set after that. And to be honest, we don't really want too much life gain (we definitely don't need a new Battle Prowess).

Luthon said:

this is strange because we still have it in stock.

Steve

I have TOO MUCH SCIV boosters... and not enough shadowar...

ChaosChild said:

Yeah. We need some life gain, but not the gross amount in the last block.

Frankly, I think the guys in FFG are doing an excellent job of rebalancing things now and I can't wait to see what they've got in store.